Justice Delayed is Justice Denied

See Kosilek vs Spencer III USCA 1st Cct No. 12-2194

THOMPSON, Circuit Judge. Twenty years after prison inmate Michelle Kosilek first requested treatment for her severe gender identity disorder, the district court issued an order requiring the defendant, Luis S. Spencer, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Correction (the "DOC"),1 to provide Kosilek with sex reassignment surgery. The court found that the DOC's failure to provide the surgery — which was said by a group of qualified doctors to be medically necessary to treat Kosilek's condition — violated Kosilek's Eighth Amendment rights. The DOC appeals the district court's order. Having carefully considered the relevant law and the extensive factual record, we affirm the judgment of the district court.

... In 1992, Kosilek filed a pro se complaint against the DOC in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.4 See Kosilek v. Maloney, 221 F. Supp. 2d 156 (D. Mass. 2002) ("Kosilek I"). Kosilek alleged the DOC was denying her adequate medical care in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Kosilek sought damages and an injunction ordering that she be provided with sex reassignment surgery....

Meanwhile, in December 2000, having not yet received the relief she was seeking, Kosilek filed this case — a second pro se lawsuit against the DOC and some of its medical providers. See Kosilek v. Spencer, 889 F. Supp. 2d 190 (D. Mass. 2012) ("Kosilek II"). Again the gravamen of Kosilek's complaint was that the DOC was denying her adequate medical care in violation of the Eighth Amendment by not providing her with sex reassignment surgery. This case also went to Judge Wolf.
In February 2002, Kosilek's first lawsuit, Kosilek I, finally proceeded to a non-jury trial...

On August 28, 2002, Judge Wolf issued his decision. See Kosilek I, 221 F. Supp. 2d at 156....

... the court found Kosilek had fallen short of establishing an Eighth Amendment violation because the subjective component of deliberate indifference had not been satisfied. Maloney, the court concluded, knew many facts from which he could have inferred Kosilek would suffer serious harm if her gender identity disorder was not treated, but he did not actually draw that required inference. Instead Judge Wolf found Maloney's refusal to allow Kosilek treatment was "rooted in sincere security concerns, and in a fear of public and political criticism as well."
The end result: because there was no Eighth Amendment violation, the court did not order the DOC to do anything.


Nonetheless, Judge Wolf expected it would do something. He wrote: "This court's decision puts Maloney on notice that Kosilek has a serious medical need which is not being properly treated. Therefore, he has a duty to respond reasonably to it. The court expects that he will."

In 2003, Dr. Seil made the same recommendation, indicating that Kosilek should be allowed to meet with a specialist after a year on hormones. Then in February 2005, the Fenway Center doctors indicated after evaluating Kosilek that she should be allowed to have surgery. Dennehy herself was Deputy Commissioner during Kosilek I and was involved in the decisions made in connection with that case. And right when she started as Commissioner, Dennehy slowed things down. She took the unusual step in assuming an active role in a de novo blanket reassessment of the treatment of those inmates suffering from gender identity disorder, including Kosilek, despite the fact that the DOC's contract with UMass provided that the UMass medical professionals would make the decisions about the medical care for inmates with this disorder and the Commissioner would only step in at the end to assess any security concerns.

The DOC explains away this delay by claiming that for a long time it did not understand that UMass recommended surgery for Kosilek, but the district court did not buy it.< br/>...
Thus, in the end, there was evidence that the DOC knew that Kosilek's medical providers were recommending surgery, and in response, the DOC dallied and disregarded. This behavior is significant, as in order to establish a subjective intent, "it is enough for the prisoner to show a wanton disregard sufficiently evidenced 'by denial, delay, or interference with prescribed health care.'" Battista, 645 F.3d at 453 (quoting DesRosiers, 949 F.2d at 19); see also Johnson v. Wright, 412 F.3d 398, 404 (2d Cir. 2005)(A "deliberate indifference claim can lie where prison officials deliberately ignore the medical recommendations of a prisoner's treating physicians.").
...
Aside from the DOC's purported security concerns, the court pointed to other evidence which it thought suggested the DOC's denial of surgery was not prompted by valid penological concerns but rather a deliberate indifference to Kosilek's medical needs. For instance, there was evidence that the DOC did not leave things up to chance when it sought an opinion about whether an operation for Kosilek was even warranted. The DOC knew before it retained Osborne that she was assisting other departments of corrections in defending litigation filed by transgender prisoners.
In fact, Hughes specifically noted that Osborne would be more sympathetic to the DOC's concerns and that she did not believe that sex reassignment surgery was appropriate in the corrections setting. It was not a stretch for the court to disbelieve Dennehy's testimony that Osborne's very predictable opposition to providing Kosilek with surgery did not play a role in her selection.

The public disapproval of Kosilek's quest was another piece of the puzzle. Even though Dennehy and Clarke denied being motivated by avoidance of public controversy, the district court found this testimony lacking in credibility and concluded that Dennehy and Clarke were keenly aware of and in fact motivated by the outcry. Evidence supporting the court's finding included Dennehy's press appearance in the news piece featuring her senator acquaintance who opposed the surgery; Dennehy's testimony that she was aware that some politicians were against Kosilek being provided with surgery and that she was generally aware of the negative news coverage; and Clarke's admission that he received the two letters from the seventeen unhappy state senators and twenty-five unhappy representatives.
...
It is enough that the district court had a reasonable basis for its perception that the DOC had shown a pattern of "delays, poor explanations, missteps, changes in position and rigidities." Id. And as we chronicled above, there was ample evidentiary support for this finding. Finding no clear error, we defer to the district court's assessment of Dennehy's and Clarke's testimony and the other evidence on the issue.

TLDR; - it's been 20 years with no end in sight because of deliberate delay due to personal, political and electoral unpopularity. Every stone has deliberately been left unturned.

Fischer Scientifically Proves That Transgender People Can Cure Themselves

J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2008 Jan;93(1):182-9

A 46,XY mother who developed as a normal woman underwent spontaneous puberty, reached menarche, menstruated regularly, experienced two unassisted pregnancies, and gave birth to a 46,XY daughter with complete gonadal dysgenesis.

 US National Library of Medicine

Klinefelter syndrome is a condition related to the X and Y chromosomes (the sex chromosomes). People typically have two sex chromosomes in each cell: females have two X chromosomes (46,XX), and males have one X and one Y chromosome (46,XY). Most often, Klinefelter syndrome results from the presence of one extra copy of the X chromosome in each cell (47,XXY).
...
Some people with features of Klinefelter syndrome have more than one extra sex chromosome in each cell (for example, 48,XXXY or 49,XXXXY). These conditions, which are often called variants of Klinefelter syndrome, tend to cause more severe signs and symptoms than classic Klinefelter syndrome
...
Some people with features of Klinefelter syndrome have the extra X chromosome in only some of their cells; in these individuals, the condition is described as mosaic Klinefelter syndrome (46,XY/47,XXY). Individuals with mosaic Klinefelter syndrome may have milder signs and symptoms, depending on how many cells have an additional X chromosome.

John Calvin, sermon no. 8 on 1st Corinthians, 677, cited in John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait by William J. Bouwsma (Oxford Univ. Press, 1988), A. 72

"Those who assert that 'the earth moves and turns'...[are] motivated by 'a spirit of bitterness, contradiction, and faultfinding;' possessed by the devil, they aimed 'to pervert the order of nature.'"

Scientific Ignorance and Religion - twas ever thus.

A Huge Update

The page Transsexual and Intersex Gender Identity has just been updated with a similar list of references of equal size, and very little overlap.

The list is at http://www.cakeworld.info/home/transsexualism/what-causes

Cis, Trans, and Privilege

I'm not one to rail on about Gender Politics. I'm interested in Human Rights, especially as they effect Trans and Intersex people. I'm interested in the Science of Sex and Gender. The sociology, politics, and ideology, not so much. There's an awfully low signal-to-noise ratio there, unevidenced conjectures declaimed with much conviction, and often inhuman cruelty.

This blog is intended to be educational and informative, about a matter that should be of interest to everyone. A matter of "public concern", mixing education about the science, and information about how Trans and Intersex people are treated and all too often mistreated, not just in Australian Society, but worldwide. My audience is mixed, a large number of those directly affected, but also those who want to see improvement in the world, or are just plain curious about matters that seem inexplicable to many. A blog is an entirely appropriate way of reaching such an audience, either directly, or by providing a set of resources (mostly about the science) for others to make use of.

Most of my readers are neither Trans nor Intersex. Most of my friends are neither Trans nor Intersex. All of my friends, and the vast majority of readers, are rational people of goodwill. Some are on the Right, some on the Left, there are differences of opinion on many matters. Reasonable people can differ.

One problem I have, that many reasonable people of goodwill have, is that we're unaware of our privilege. The unearned advantages we have compared to others, that we consider only natural and right, and which we assume that everyone has. Everyone we know does, anyway.

This post is about cis-privilege. Now the majority of cis (pronounced "sizz" or "siss") people don't even know what the prefix cis- means. Latin scholars and chemists, and some English majors are the only ones who can be expected to know that cis- and trans- are opposites. Cis - same-side, Trans - across. Hence Cis-isomers and trans-isomers, CiaAlpine Gaul and TransAlpine Gaul, CisAtlantic and TransAtlantic.

CisGender and Transgender.

Cis-privilege is the set of advantages that cis- people have compared to trans- people, and that they're not aware of. Many fanatics vehemently deny that such a thing exists, or even can exist. There's a high correlation there with people who want to see trans people exterminated though. "Morally mandated out of existence" anyway.

Here's some examples from Gronkwena that illustrate cis-privilege beautifully. It's aimed at cis people. Please imagine if you were in a world where such educational posters were necessary, to educate rational, well-meaning trans people about those who are cis.



Now you know what "cis-privilege" means. It means such posters aren't necessary.

DMRT1 prevents female reprogramming in the postnatal mammalian testis

Another one for the reference library: DMRT1 prevents female reprogramming in the postnatal mammalian testis Matson et al Nature 476, 101–104 (04 August 2011)

Sex in mammals is determined in the fetal gonad by the presence or absence of the Y chromosome gene Sry, which controls whether bipotential precursor cells differentiate into testicular Sertoli cells or ovarian granulosa cells¹. This pivotal decision in a single gonadal cell type ultimately controls sexual differentiation throughout the body. Sex determination can be viewed as a battle for primacy in the fetal gonad between a male regulatory gene network in which Sry activates Sox9 and a female network involving WNT/β-catenin signalling². In females the primary sex-determining decision is not final: loss of the FOXL2 transcription factor in adult granulosa cells can reprogram granulosa cells into Sertoli cells². Here we show that sexual fate is also surprisingly labile in the testis: loss of the DMRT1 transcription factor³ in mouse Sertoli cells, even in adults, activates Foxl2 and reprograms Sertoli cells into granulosa cells. In this environment, theca cells form, oestrogen is produced and germ cells appear feminized. Thus Dmrt1 is essential to maintain mammalian testis determination, and competing regulatory networks maintain gonadal sex long after the fetal choice between male and female. Dmrt1 and Foxl2 are conserved throughout vertebrates^{4, 5} and Dmrt1-related sexual regulators are conserved throughout metazoans³. Antagonism between Dmrt1 and Foxl2 for control of gonadal sex may therefore extend beyond mammals. Reprogramming due to loss of Dmrt1 also may help explain the aetiology of human syndromes linked to DMRT1, including disorders of sexual differentiation⁶ and testicular cancer⁷. 

Time to get my genes re-tested.

Identification of de novo copy number variants associated with human disorders of sexual development. Tannour-Louet et al PLoS One. 2010 Oct 26;5(10):e15392.

Disorders of sexual development (DSD), ranging in severity from genital abnormalities to complete sex reversal, are among the most common human birth defects with incidence rates reaching almost 3%. Although causative alterations in key genes controlling gonad development have been identified, the majority of DSD cases remain unexplained. To improve the diagnosis, we screened 116 children born with idiopathic DSD using a clinically validated array-based comparative genomic hybridization platform. 8951 controls without urogenital defects were used to compare with our cohort of affected patients. Clinically relevant imbalances were found in 21.5% of the analyzed patients. Most anomalies (74.2%) evaded detection by the routinely ordered karyotype and were scattered across the genome in gene-enriched subtelomeric loci. Among these defects, confirmed de novo duplication and deletion events were noted on 1p36.33, 9p24.3 and 19q12-q13.11 for ambiguous genitalia, 10p14 and Xq28 for cryptorchidism and 12p13 and 16p11.2 for hypospadias. These variants were significantly associated with genitourinary defects (P = 6.08×10(-12)). The causality of defects observed in 5p15.3, 9p24.3, 22q12.1 and Xq28 was supported by the presence of overlapping chromosomal rearrangements in several unrelated patients. In addition to known gonad determining genes including SRY and DMRT1, novel candidate genes such as FGFR2, KANK1, ADCY2 and ZEB2 were encompassed. The identification of risk germline rearrangements for urogenital birth defects may impact diagnosis and genetic counseling and contribute to the elucidation of the molecular mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis of human sexual development.

Note:

• incidence rates reaching almost 3%
• the majority of DSD cases remain unexplained.
• Most anomalies (74.2%) evaded detection by the routinely ordered karyotype

A New Era for Intersex Rights : The New Yorker

A New Era for Intersex Rights : The New Yorker

People are starting to notice.

My comment :

I find it amazing that so many non-Intersex people are so vehement in asserting that only *they* know who or what we *really* are. That their opinion trumps our experienced narrative.
That might not be so bad if you could all agree with one another, but you can't.

Then there's the overt homophobia - confusing us with gays. The overt trans- and intersex-phobia, (often from gays ironically enough, who object to being associated with us). They have a point - the only things we have in common is that it's the same people who hate us both, and the fact that Stonewall, the celebrated GLBT beginning of the fight for equal rights, was largely led by Trans people. They've always been a part of that, not "tacked on" as revisionist and comforting mythology would have it.

Intersex people have in the past, largely been able to hide instead. Not to make waves. Only the few (with 5ARD,17BHSD,3BHSD etc) who physically change apparent sex during their lifetimes get the problems Trans people do. That's 2% of live births in a few isolated pockets on the planet, but exceedingly rare in the US. Maybe only a few thousand.

For some, it's a descent into nightmare. For some, an interesting life experience. For many, a release from the Hell of (effective) transsexuality, neuro-anatomy of one sex, genital anatomy of the other.

Our mere existence is against many strongly convicted religious people's most deeply-felt beliefs.

The article states : "While certain religious groups argue that sexuality is a choice (and certain sexual lifestyles are therefore sinful), no one makes that argument about biology."

I wish that were so. All too many Charismatic Christians deeply believe in the power of Demonic Posession, and consequently label Intersex people as Demonic, if not actual Demons.  To a lesser extent, Trans people too, a candidate for the Colorado legislature, Gordon Klingenschmitt, recently labelled them as "possessed by a spirit of Rape".on his syndicated TV show.

In summary - a quote from Dr Who:
 "You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering."

I can attest to that discomfort.

All we can do is try to inform, to educate, and rely on the general humanity and goodwill present in nearly everyone. My faith in that has sometimes been sorely tested, but remains battered but unbowed. Articles like this one help, even though reading most of the commentary shows we have a long way to go. Excelsior etc.

Thought For Today

Heinlein – Specialization is for Insects | Not Always On

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein

I prefer to live rather than die gallantly though. That's a last resort. Instead, I try to fight so efficiently that it's the other side that has to contemplate that. No matter, I intend winning. Consequences to myself are secondary. If a battle is worth fighting, win it, regardless of personal cost. If not, avoid it.

You see, RAH said something else too.

It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier.

 I'm lazy, I guess.

Transsexuals and the Legal System - Scottish Edition

From the Daily Record:

A TRANSGENDER woman has demanded an apology from bungling sheriff court workers who sent an offensive note with her divorce papers.
Becky Kent was stunned when she read a handwritten memo which officials had forgotten to remove from her paperwork. It was stuck on top of her divorce decree and sent to her.
The scribbled Post-it note read: “Colin it’s right!!! Man – changed his name to woman’s name – statutory declaration attached!!! Takes all sorts!!”
The letter had also been addressed “Dear Sir”.

Doesn't exactly give one warm fuzzies about being treated respectfully, does it? All too typical, I'm afraid.
Right now, very afraid in fact. Still, unless we fight this kind of thing, openly, with the more publicity the better, exposing it as a matter of public interest, it won't change.

The Validity of Marriage after Transition in the US

From Indiana Public Media:

Sanders says the ruling will likely serve as an example when this issue comes up in other courts.
“Around the country there are probably more couples in this situation than many people realize.” Sanders says. “That is a couple who was male and female at the time being married and then one of them transitioned genders and many of them wished to stay married.”
Sanders says couples in this situation need confirmation their marriage won’t become void automatically if one of the parties undergoes a gender change.
Sanders says the Indiana appellate court’s decision is the first one documented involving gender change within a legal marriage. 

Actually, I think there's another case in Florida.

Q: Is a marriage still valid if one spouse transitions
later on?

A: Marriages remain valid if they were valid at the time they were entered into. The government cannot retroactively invalidate a marriage because of a change in eligibility criteria that occurs after the marriage is entered into. Not even the federal Defense of Marriage Act (see sidebar for more about DOMA) should affect couples who are already married and were eligible for marriage at the time they entered into that relationship.
It’s an important principle to defend, especially in the face of openly anti-transgender policies and sentiments. That was the situation, for example, in 2007 when Lambda Legal represented a transgender man in a Florida alimony case known as Roach v. Roach n.k.a. Silverwolf. Julio Silverwolf(formerly Julia Roach) transitioned from female to male after 18 years of marriage to Lawrence Roach.
When the couple were divorcing, Roach argued that he shouldn’t have to pay alimony because Silverwolf was “legally dead” as a result of his transition and because Florida does not recognize marriages of same-sex couples. But the court upheld the alimony agreement, basing its ruling on the determination that the marriage was valid at the time it was entered into.

That's from Lambda Legal's TRANSGENDER RIGHTS TOOLKIT: A LEGAL GUIDE FOR TRANS PEOPLE AND THEIR ADVOCATES TRANSGENDER PEOPLE AND MARRIAGE LAWS

I have a letter from the Australian Attorney General (at the time) confirming that this is also the situation here. If legally Male and Female at the time the marriage was contracted, the marriage remains valid. Unfortunately there's caselaw stating that Intersex people, regardless of birth certificates or other documentation, are neither male nor female for the purposes of marriage, and so may not marry anyone.

The US Economy, in a nutshell.

Australia wealth per capita
2000 : 74,675 Debt 36,348 (net 40k)
mid 2013 : 301,739 Debt 100,492 (net 200k)

USA wealth per capita:
2000: 137,319 Debt 46,324 (net 90k)
mid 2013: 220,677 Debt 56,811 (net 164k)

Australia 2013 per capita
Mean wealth 402,578
Median wealth 219,505
GDP 93,244

United States 2013 per capita
Mean wealth 301,140
Median wealth 44,911
GDP 68,673

Source : http://www.international-adviser.com/ia/media/Media/Credit-Suisse-Global-Wealth-Databook-2013.pdf

Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer-except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs. ...

Today he and his friends had visited Animal Farm and inspected every inch of it with their own eyes, and what did they find? Not only the most up-to-date methods, but a discipline and an orderliness which should be an example to all farmers everywhere. He believed that he was right in saying that the lower animals on Animal Farm did more work and received less food than any animals in the county. Indeed, he and his fellow-visitors today had observed many features which they intended to introduce on their own farms immediately.

Source : Animal Farm Chapter 10, by George Orwell.

Past History

When I was young, I was one of the few kids who would talk to a boy called Stephen Bristow. Son of "Timmy" Bristow. A walking mountain. Or, as one Judge described him in court, a "Walking Nightmare".

Oddly enough, he had a personal code of conduct that amounted to "Do unto others as they've done unto others, with interest.". The honest had nothing to fear. Others....

My mother disturbed an intruder in our house when coming home from shopping once. He fled, taking some items of considerable sentimental, though not monetary, value.

Tim Bristow got word of it.... We received them back in our postbox in a few days, with a misspelt crudely hand-written letter of apology that can only be described as "grovelling".

I saw Tim greet State Premiers (equivalent of Governors), Chief Stipendiary Magistrates (equivalent of Chief Justices) and other crooks. Only some of whom ended up in jail. He was on a first-name basis with them, as I can personally attest to.

He told us where not to go fishing - a spot off Bungan Beach he called the "See you later club". Miles to the south of where it was reputed to be, possibly a little misdirection on his part to avoid legal, er, complications. Not far from where a Japanese WWII minisub that had been missing since 1942 was found recently.

Our family, very straight-laced, humdrum, ordinary, and ridiculously law-abiding, lived in a very different world from his. Yet somehow there was contact, even friendship. Tim Bristow phoned to give his condolences on my father's death in 1993, the last time I spoke to him.

There have been ex-cops turned "debt collector" since. None of them resemble Tim Bristow though.

Gaudete!

Tom Lehrer - A Christmas Carol

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

Mistaken Gender: 5-Alpha Reductase Hermaphroditism and Biological Reductionism in Sexual Identity Reconsidered

Another for the reference library. Also.. a bit too close to home, the way some were treated.

Mistaken Gender: 5-Alpha Reductase Hermaphroditism and Biological Reductionism in Sexual Identity Reconsidered Gilbert Herdt, Academic Room 2012

Hermaphroditic infants are sex-assigned as kwolu-aatmwol, not as male. Those assigned as female are mistaken as normal females. Hermaphrodism is regarded as a sad and mysterious quirk.

The kwolu-aatmwol, unless distinguished as a shaman or war leader, is quietly disparaged. Yet several kwolu-aatmwol are well known in local history, and one of them, now deceased, was famed both as shaman and fight leader. The kwolu-aatmwol is therefore not rejected or frozen out of daily and normative social contacts, and may indeed rise to distinction through special achievements, as Sakulambei has done. Nor do Sambia feel disgust regarding these liminal beings. Still, Sambia is a sexually polarized society, and parents do not want infants to be hermaphroditic: the intersexed infant may be killed at birth by women, the men believe (Herdt 1981). If it passes as female, however, it is sure to survive.

Consequently, at birth, women carefully check the infant's sex to ensure that it is not kwolu-aatmwol. When discovered at birth, the child is reared in the direction of masculinity, but not unambiguously; rather, it is referred to as kwolu-aatmwol or male, because parents know that their infant will not change into a female. Sometimes the kwolu-aatmwol as a child is teased and humiliated by peers for having "no penis." If parents feel ashamed or rejecting of the child, the mental health outcome is poorer (Herdt and Davidson 1988).

Five of the fourteen kwolu-aatmwol were reared as females. Two of these are still alive.

One late adolescent continues to live as a female, though she is unmarried, physically larger than a normal female, and is now known to be a kwolu-aatmwol. The other living subject is an older adult who was reportedly reared ambiguously as a female.

The Rabbit has landed

From Universe Today :

China scored a stunning, history making success with the successful touchdown of the ambitious Chang’e-3 probe with the ‘Yutu’ rover on the surface of the Moon today, Dec. 14, on the country’s first ever attempt to conduct a landing on an extraterrestrial body.
The dramatic Chang’e-3 soft landing on the lava filled plains of the Bay of Rainbows occurred at about 8:11 am EST, 9:11 p.m. Beijing local time, 1311 GMT today.
The monumental feat is the first landing on the Moon by any entity in nearly four decades. It was broadcast live on CCTV, China’s state run television network.

Why I say "Merry Christmas" not "Happy Holiday"

The Aurelian Alternatives

The attribution is probably apocryphal. Nonetheless, the words speak for themselves.

Another piece of the puzzle

Yet more evidence that MtoF and FtoM are not mirror-images, and that while saying "Trans women have female brains" captures the essence, and is useful as an initial step towards understanding, the reality is more complex than that. For that matter, cis women don't have female brains as such, yet men and women have statistical differences in neuro anatomy that correlate well with statistical differences in behaviour - such as sense of smell.

Cortical activation during mental rotation in male-to-female and female-to-male transsexuals under hormonal treatment. Carillo et al, Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2010 Sep;35(8):1213-22

There is strong evidence of sex differences in mental rotation tasks. Transsexualism is an extreme gender identity disorder in which individuals seek cross-gender treatment to change their sex. The aim of our study was to investigate if male-to-female (MF) and female-to-male (FM) transsexuals receiving cross-sex hormonal treatment have different patterns of cortical activation during a three-dimensional (3D) mental rotation task. An fMRI study was performed using a 3-T scan in a sample of 18 MF and 19 FM under chronic cross-sex hormonal treatment. Twenty-three males and 19 females served as controls. The general pattern of cerebral activation seen while visualizing the rotated and non-rotated figures was similar for all four groups showing strong occipito-parieto-frontal brain activation. However, compared to control males, the activation of MF transsexuals during the task was lower in the superior parietal lobe. Compared to control females, MF transsexuals showed higher activation in orbital and right dorsolateral prefrontal regions and lower activation in the left prefrontal gyrus. FM transsexuals did not differ from either the MF transsexual or control groups. Regression analyses between cerebral activation and the number of months of hormonal treatment showed a significant negative correlation in parietal, occipital and temporal regions in the MF transsexuals. No significant correlations with time were seen in the FM transsexuals. In conclusion, although we did not find a specific pattern of cerebral activation in the FM transsexuals, we have identified a specific pattern of cerebral activation during a mental 3D rotation task in MF transsexuals under cross-sex hormonal treatment that differed from control males in the parietal region and from control females in the orbital prefrontal region. The hypoactivation in MF transsexuals in the parietal region could be due to the hormonal treatment or could reflect a priori cerebral differences between MF transsexual and control subjects.

The Failure of Trickle-Down Economics in the USA

I used to be a great believer in "trickle-down". Up until 1980, there was evidence that it always worked. This evidence couldn't be ignored.

However, I did not foresee that there was a tipping-point in the concentration of wealth where it made far more economic sense to buy the government than to invest in plant.

This means that regulations which restrain monopolistic and anti-competitive practices are repealed or not enforced, while ever more burdensome regulations that strangle upstart competitors at birth are enacted. The more of the latter there are, the more persuasive the argument to relax regulations against the big boys. The more the big boys get away with murder, the more persuasive the argument for regulations and yet more regulations that only affect the small end of town in practice.

Trickle-down cannot help but grow an economy in an absolute sense; but when the distribution is too concentrated, most of the growth ends up in the hands of a very few, while the median standard stays steady, growing very slowly. In pathological cases, not just all the growth, but over 100% of it ends up in the hands of those who control the legislatures, and the median standard actually falls, as in the USA today.

This leads to a runaway effect, where 1% of the populace holds more national wealth than the rest of the country put together. The US hasn't reached that state yet, but it's 40% in 2013, and likely to hit over 50% soon, with 60, 70, 80% to come. The trend is clear, the concentration accelerating.

The result ' "too big to fail, too big to jail" is already visible. Disrupting the system by putting the brakes on would cause economic chaos, hence the need for bailouts and ever increasing corporate welfare. There are already commercial organisations essentially immune from legal sanction. Examples of CEOs paying less tax in absolute terms than their secretaries, and ridiculously less in relative terms, abound.

That's the diagnosis. The cure? Er... pass.

Signs of the times: From Rolling Stone:

For at least half a decade, the storied British colonial banking power helped to wash hundreds of millions of dollars for drug mobs, including Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel, suspected in tens of thousands of murders just in the past 10 years – people so totally evil, jokes former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, that "they make the guys on Wall Street look good." The bank also moved money for organizations linked to Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, and for Russian gangsters; helped countries like Iran, the Sudan and North Korea evade sanctions; and, in between helping murderers and terrorists and rogue states, aided countless common tax cheats in hiding their cash.

"They violated every goddamn law in the book," says Jack Blum, an attorney and former Senate investigator who headed a major bribery investigation against Lockheed in the 1970s that led to the passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. "They took every imaginable form of illegal and illicit business."

That nobody from the bank went to jail or paid a dollar in individual fines is nothing new in this era of financial crisis. What is different about this settlement is that the Justice Department, for the first time, admitted why it decided to go soft on this particular kind of criminal. It was worried that anything more than a wrist slap for HSBC might undermine the world economy.

"Had the U.S. authorities decided to press criminal charges," said Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer at a press conference to announce the settlement, "HSBC would almost certainly have lost its banking license in the U.S., the future of the institution would have been under threat and the entire banking system would have been destabilized."

Remember what I said : The result ' "too big to fail, too big to jail" is already visible. Disrupting the system by putting the brakes on would cause economic chaos, hence the need for bailouts and ever increasing corporate welfare. There are already commercial organisations essentially immune from legal sanction.
When it comes to wealth distribution... from HuffPo

The United States has such an unequal distribution of wealth so that it's in the league of corrupt underdeveloped countries, no longer in the league of the developed nations, according to the latest edition of the world's most thorough study of wealth-distribution.

The most authoritative source comparing wealth-concentration in the various countries is the successor to the reports that used to be done for the United Nations, now performed as the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook. The latest (2013) edition of it finds (p. 146) that in the U.S., 75.4% of all wealth is owned by the richest 10% of the people.

The comparable figures for the other developed countries are: Australia 50.3%, Canada 57.4%, Denmark 72.2%, Finland 44.9%, France 51.8%, Germany 61.7%, Ireland 58.4%, Israel 68.9%, Italy 49.8%, Japan 49.1%, Netherlands 54.6%, New Zealand 57.6%, Norway 65.9%, Singapore 61.1%, Spain 54.0%, Sweden 71.1%, Switzerland 71.5%, and U.K. 53.3%.

Those are the top 20 developed nations, and the U.S. has the most extreme wealth-concentration of them all. However, there are some other countries that have wealth-concentrations that are about as extreme as the U.S. For examples: Chile 72.5%, India 73.8%, Indonesia 75.0%, and South Africa 74.8%. The U.S. is in their league; not in the league of developed economies. In the U.S., the bottom 90% of the population own only 24.6% of all the privately held wealth, whereas in most of the developed world, the bottom 90% own around 40%; so, the degree of wealth-concentration in the U.S. is extraordinary (except for underdeveloped countries).

The broadest mathematical measure of wealth-inequality is called "Gini," and the higher it is, the more extreme the nation's wealth-inequality is. The Gini for the U.S. is 85.1. Other extremely unequal countries are (pages 98-101 of this report) Chile 81.4, India 81.3, Indonesia 82.8, and South Africa 83.6. However, some nations are even more-extreme than the U.S.: Kazakhstan 86.7, Russia 93.1, and Ukraine 90.0. But Honduras and Guatemala are such rabid kleptocracies that their governments don't even provide sufficiently reliable data for an estimate to be able to be made; and, so, some countries might be even higher than nations like Russia.

 At current rates, the Gini for the USA will be in the low 90's by 2020: the trend is accelerating, not tailing off.

A Big Win in the USA

Stating the bleedin' obvious Department.

NCD 140.3, Transsexual Surgery
Docket No. A-13-47
NCD Ruling No. 2
December 2, 2013
BOARD RULING THAT NCD RECORD IS NOT COMPLETE AND ADEQUATE TO SUPPORT THE VALIDITY OF THE NCD

The aggrieved party also argues that the NCD when issued was invalid and unsupported by the NCD record. The aggrieved party argues that the 1981 NCHCT report acknowledged the effectiveness of transsexual surgery in stating that “eight of the nine studies” that “represent[ed] the major clinical reports thus far published” between 1969 and 1980 on the outcome of the surgery “reported that most transsexuals show improved adjustment on a variety of criteria after sex reassignment surgery.”7 NCD Record at 1718. The aggrieved party also argues that the ninth, unfavorable, study on which the NCHCT relied was “severely flawed and ideologically biased,” and criticizes two of the sources cited in the 1981 NCHT report as ideologically biased against transgender individuals, based on their published writings. AP Statement at 5. We need not and do not address these arguments since we need not decide here whether the NCD record was complete and adequate to support the NCD at the time the NCD record was developed. In any event, our determination that the NCD record fails to account for developments in the care and treatment of persons with GID during the more than 30 years that have passed since the NCHCT issued its report containing the findings that HCFA adopted in issuing the NCD is, without more, a sufficient basis for our determination that the NCD record is not complete and adequate to support the validity of NCD 140.3.

7 The NCHCT discounted these findings on the ground that the eight favorable studies did not meet “the ideal criteria of a valid scientific evaluation of a clinical procedure.” NCD Record at 18.

 In summary:

Based on the current record in this proceeding initiated by an acceptable NCD complaint from an aggrieved party, the Departmental Appeals Board (Board) has determined that the NCD (National Coverage Determination) record in this case “is not complete and adequate to support the validity of the NCD” denying Medicare coverage for transsexual surgery “for sex reassignment of transsexuals.” 42 C.F.R. § 426.525(c)(3); NCD 140.3. The submissions of the aggrieved party and the amici curiae, to which the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) elected not to respond to defend the NCD, demonstrate that the premises for the NCD, which was based on a 1981 review of medical and scientific sources published between 1966 and 1980, are not reasonable in light of subsequent developments. This proceeding will thus move on to discovery and taking of evidence as provided in 42 C.F.R. §§ 426.532 and 426.540. This ruling does not address the ultimate question of whether the NCD as written is valid under the reasonableness standard, but only whether the existing NCD record on which the NCD was based is complete and adequate to support its validity.

In other words... the recorded evidential basis for judging that treatment for Trans patients shouldn't be covered by Medicare is inadequate.  There is considerable evidence that the conclusion was unjustified when it was made back in 1981, and the veritable mountain of evidence accumulated over the intervening third of a century has universally indicated that it was very wrong indeed. Certainly enough to overcome the burden of proof that the Aggrieved Party bears, and so great an amount that the CMS elected not to contest it.

The next step is to show that the ruling is not just unevidenced and unjustified, but that it is unreasonable and unjustifiable. The CMS may elect not to contest that proposition too, given the data.

This situation should have been reviewed decades ago, when there was possibly a shadow of doubt, rather than today when there's none. If this is treated in the same way as every other medical situation is treated, the result is a foregone conclusion. Unfortunately, that's a big if.

Source (PDF)

The Dragon in Space : 10 years on

The Space Review: As China goes to the Moon, prize teams stay in the race

While several private American companies are planning robotic missions to the moon, China launched a man-sized robotic scout to the moon on Monday. The country’s recent manned missions and efforts to build a new space base suggest a future manned mission to the moon, though why is an open question. Speculation has run from the desire to build a military missile base -- a Death Star of sorts -- to national pride to simple economics.
The answer may be far simpler: The moon is “easy” to get to.
“If you’re still trying to test out your space legs, it’s a great place to do it,” said one NASA engineer familiar with the agency’s plans.

 One small step for Man at a time.... this isn't a one-time stunt, it's a slow and methodical long-term exploration and colonisation effort.

Dennis Wingo, a space entrepreneur and author of the book “MoonRush,” thinks the Chinese mission is about supporting the world’s exploding population.
“China is spending billions on resource acquisition in Africa, South America and other places around the world,” he told FoxNews.com. “If you look at the design of their system for this mission, it is very much a mineral prospector as much as a science mission.”
Yet America will not return to the moon, NASA administrator Charlie Bolden makes clear.
“NASA is not going to the moon with a human as a primary project probably in my lifetime,” Bolden said at an April panel in Washington.

China’s Chang’e 3 lander -- which should touch down on the moon in mid-December -- will be the first controlled landing since the Soviet Union’s Luna-24 mission in 1976.

 From Universe Today:

China’s maiden moon landing probe successfully entered lunar orbit on Friday, Dec. 6, following Sunday’s (Dec. 1) spectacular blastoff – setting the stage for the historic touchdown attempt in mid December.
Engineer’s at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC) commanded the Chang’e 3 lunar probe to fire its braking thrusters for 361 seconds, according to China’s Xinhua news agency.
The do or die orbital insertion maneuver proceeded precisely as planned at the conclusion of a four and a half day voyage to Earth’s nearest neighbor.
...
Chang’e 3 is due to make a powered descent to the Moon’s surface on Dec. 14, firing the landing thrusters at an altitude of 15 km (9 mi) for a soft landing in a preselected area called the Bay of Rainbows or Sinus Iridum region.
...
Chang’e 3 marks the beginning of the second phase of China’s lunar robotic exploration program. The lander follows a pair of highly successful lunar orbiters named Chang’e 1 and 2 which launched in 2007 and 2010. The next step will be an unmanned lunar sample return mission, perhaps by 2020.

Previous posts on this blog have followed China's careful, methodical, and above all, successful space colonisation effort for many years. Starting in July 2003.

The Chinese Manned Space programme has proceeded slowly, carefully, one step at a time. And it has proceeded very successfully so far as the result.

As was written in September 2003:

Meanwhile, space officials said China hoped to launch a space probe capable of orbiting the moon by 2005 or 2006, which would be the nation's first lunar mission and would eventually lead to an eventual landing on the moon by an unmanned Chinese lunar space craft.

And in October 2003 :

Yes, they've been methodical. This is not some flash-in-the-pan Space Spectacular for no more worthy a goal than National prestige. It's not a Space Race as such - because a Race implies that they're competing against some other entity. No, after consulting my Crystal Ball, taking the auguries, and examining the entrails of a goat, I think they're in it for the long term. I'm not talking about Scientific missions to Mars, or even Exploratory missions to the Moon. I'm talking about setting up a permanent presence. Not next year. Not next decade, nor the one after that. But certainly within the next 50 years. I think that they have a plan. A flexible one, that will adapt to changing circumstances and unforeseeable problems, but a plan nonetheless.

There was no funding for lunar projects in the ten-year space plan approved in 2001. By July 2001 a Chinese aerospace magazine indicated that Chinese scientists had drafted a much more modest four-phase long term plan.

Phase 1, by 2005: Lunar flyby or orbiting satellite missions, perhaps using the DFH-3 bus.
Phase 2, by 2010: unmanned soft-landing missions.
Phase 3, by 2020: Robotic exploration using surface rovers.
Phase 4, by 2030: Lunar sample return missions.
Only after 2030 would manned flights and construction of a lunar base begin.

The Shenzhou manned spacecraft provides the Chinese with the required hardware to pursue a lunar program whenever they make the decision to go.

It would surprise me if the schedule didn't slip. But no matter, there's no hurry.

 Looks like phase 2 and 3 have been collapsed into one, a bit later than 2010, but earlier than 2020.

Warm Fuzzies Department

The logo of the NRO's Launch 39. A recon sat.



This does not give me warm fuzzies about the corporate culture there now. In times not so long ago, something more like this was used by similar organisations. I know, I have the coffee mugs.

Little Did I Know...

Courtesy of the Wayback Machine, at http://web.archive.org/web/20010719173326/http://www2.dynamite.com.au/aebrain/alan.htm 

 Birthplace and All That

 To quote Hoffnung, "I was born, through no fault of my own, at a very early age.". Or in my case, in 1958 in Earley, a small suburb of Reading, Berkshire, England. Or at least it was a suburb. Now its been swallowed up in Reading proper. Last time I was there (1986), the fields I used to watch the Foxhunters go through are now a high-density housing development ("Lower Earley", and you can't get much lower, I'm telling you...), and the stream I used to fish in is a concrete storm water drain.. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi, and the song "Tar and Cement" comes to mind.

When I was 10 and at boarding school (a place called Bigshotte, which appears to have vanished with the snows of yesteryear), I got an unscheduled visit from my parents. Who informed me that in 2 weeks time we were emigrating to Australia. You can take the boy out of England, but you can't take England out of the boy, and it wasn't until 1988 that I finally decided to take out Australian Citizenship. I still retain dual nationality, though the England I came from no longer exists, but has been transformed into a diverse multi-ethnic European state. Overall, a great improvement, but not a place I can identify with very much.

Good Things, Bad Things

After attending Sydney Grammar School for 6 years, I entered Sydney University in 1976. My father was unemployed, my mother hospitalised. Not a good time. Things picked up, but then I had a number of life-threatening medical problems. Picked up a little brain damage from Encephalo-Meningitis (yes, I know, it shows...). Spent half my lectures zonked out from Painkillers. Operations etc. Nuff Said. For much of the time, I resided in International House (and this is a link well worth following up, the whole concept is a great idea).

Then I met Carmel for the second time, in 1980. Love at first sight. (The first time was when I was at Sydney Grammar, which is next to the Australian Museum. The one girl that I ever noticed as a schoolboy was a schoolgirl who I saw exactly once in the geological section. We both only realised we'd met there only a few years ago, as she remembered someone who looked exactly like me at the same time and place.) Anyway, within 2 months of first meeting, we were engaged. Hey, she had her own copy of Panzerblitz! And a Model Railway! I figure I've blown about 10,000 years of Good Karma by meeting her, but it's been worth it and more.  

A bit about my Brilliant Career*
* Career - To go downhill fast, without control

I graduated from Sydney University in 1981, with a BSc in Computer Science and Pure Mathematics. Since then, I've been CompSci-ing in various industries and businesses, but for the most part, doing what is euphemistically known as "defence work.". Some of the software I wrote early in my professional life performed according to specification in the Gulf War, on HMAS Brisbane.

 I can remember joking that it would work with any Air Defence Doctrine, except possibly Saudi Arabia's, but what were the odds of that happening?

 I've worked on software for a number of vessels in various Allied Navies. From analysis work on the 76mm gun system on the German Navy's new F-124, being Chief Designer for an Artificial Intelligence based Anti-Missile system for the Turkish Navy, to programming and design work on "very expensive machines that go PING" for submarines of the Israeli Defence Force, Hellenic Navy, Armada de Chile, Royal Swedish Navy, Italian Navy, and various others.

I've spent a ridiculous amount of my life peering into PPIs and Waterfall, DEMON and FRAZ displays, but also sunned myself on the Fantail of a Destroyer in the middle of the Pacific, relaxed watching a magnificent sunset in the Gulf of Thailand, and shared my personal space with half a tonne of high explosive sleeping on top of a Mk 48 Mod 3 torpedo.

In the course of my work, I've personally chiselled a hole through the Berlin Wall, inhaled Pad Thai (Thai Noodles) on the banks of the Chao Praya river in Bangkok, domiciled on the fabulously expensive Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich, gotten nervous when the Air Raid sirens wailed in Seoul, Korea, and consumed with gusto Alaskan King Crab in Akron, Ohio. It's been fun so far. (note from 2013: Now, talk about tempting Fate....this is what I wrote at the end.) Can't wait to see what happens next. 

Last updated 09 February 1999

What happened next of course is described at http://aebrain.blogspot.com.au/2006/05/annus-mirabilis.html ....

A miracle.

The 35 Greatest Easter Eggs From The "Doctor Who" 50th Anniversary

Click on picture to enter the Time Vortex

Why I will never vote for the Christian Democrats

I put them last on the ballot, after the white supremacists and anti-science nutters.

"This morning, the Christian Democrats blocked a notice of motion acknowledging today as the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. “It is very disappointing that the (NSW)Parliament will not pass a motion commemorating victims of homicide just because they are transgender."

The Transgender Day of Remembrance is not a day of protest. There is no political activity, nor fundraising. It is, quite simply, a day where we read out the names of those slain for being Trans or Intersex, or killed for even appearing to be Trans or Intersex. Those whose names we know. 238 this year, with thousands whose names we don't know. We remember and memorialise their names, because no-one else does, and no-one deserves to die un-noted and unmourned. We don't even protest their deaths, just record them. This is unacceptable to the "Christian" Democrats. It's not enough for them for us to be killed, even the fact of our deaths must be erased.

An UnEarthly Child

Classic Doctor who An UnEarthly Child by classicDoctorwho

PanSpermia - Origin: Earth

How Life-Bearing Rocks from the Chicxulub Asteroid Impact must have Spread through the Solar System

Some 65 million years ago, an asteroid the size of a small city hit the Yucatan Peninsula in what is now Mexico. The impact devastated Earth, generating huge tsunamis, massive wildfires and rapidly heating the atmosphere. It triggered earthquakes and volcanic activity and then cooled the world as smoke and dust blanketed the planet.

This impact changed the future of the Earth, triggering the sequence of events that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs, the rise of mammals and ultimately the domination of humans.

Now Christopher House and pals at Penn State Astrobiology Research Center in University Park, say this event may have had an equally profound influence on other parts of the Solar System.

These guys have calculated the number of rocks ejected into space in this collision that would have been capable of carrying life and protecting it in space. They say that significant numbers of these rocks would have made the journey to Mars and Venus but also to Jupiter and Saturn. In particular, they say these rocks would probably have travelled to moons such as Europa, Callisto and Titan, where astrobiologists believe that conditions are ripe for life.

Dishonesty - Moral Compass Broken

Ratings from the public rely on good faith. Professional liars like this guy break the model, making it useless for everyone. You also have to ask - what limits would such people observe? If they can be dishonest here, why not criminal elsewhere?
I've panned a few books - but never without reading them.

The Night of the Doctor

The Day After Remembrance

I can remember sitting on my Grandfather's knee, fascinated by the different anatomy he had on his right arm. The missing fingers, the muscles that weren't there. Souvenirs of Passchendaele.

The story he told about taking shots from a very long distance to knock out the Berlin-Istanbul telegraph line, miles behind the lines at Gallipoli.  Every morning, at first light, a group of snipers would be tasked with infiltrating behind the Turkish lines, to take out the milk-bottle sized insulators from about a mile - as close as they could get. It took many shots, but they'd do it. And that night, the Turks would replace them again.

Then there was the Somme, after the evacuation... he didn't talk much about that.

And the time in 1917, when as a sniper out in no-man's land, a group of red-painted German fighters used him for target practice. I had an Airfix model of an Albatros D.V, and he recognised that as the general type. I've looked it up, and yes, Baron Manfred Von Richthofen's "Flying Circus" had rotated into that area at that time. He was only 19.

My father told me other stories, from the war after the War to end all wars. Recovering survivors from the 1-ton "land mines" the Luftwaffe dropped on Liverpool, which would level whole rows of  houses. How later on, when he was working on a "Black" Project in SE England, you were safe if you heard the buzz of the "Doodlebug" V-1 cruise missiles. But if one passed overhead, started going away, and then cut out, you took cover. Because they'd dive back onto the place they'd just passed over. He was only 19 too.

I have no such stories to tell my son, and I am so, so grateful to all those who fought, and died, to make sure I don't.

OK, I caught a spent LMG bullet in my leg once, and have been under 122mm rocket fire, and there's some other stuff I can't talk about, but the Cold War was not in the same league, for me.

At 19, I wasn't watching the skies for Zeppelins, or Gothas, or Heinkels, or Junkers. Or Illyushins or Tupolevs, trying to drop bombs on those I love.

That lack of fear was their legacy to us, and to our children. Lest We Forget.

Another for the Reference Library

Transsexual patients’ psychiatric comorbidity and positive effect of cross-sex hormonal treatment on mental health: Results from a longitudinal study -- Marco Colizzi,Rosalia Costa, Orlando Todarello Psychoneuroendocrinology, Volume 39, January 2014, Pages 65-73,

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the presence of psychiatric diseases/symptoms in transsexual patients and to compare psychiatric distress related to the hormonal intervention in a one year follow-up assessment. We investigated 118 patients before starting the hormonal therapy and after about 12 months. We used the SCID-I to determine major mental disorders and functional impairment. We used the Zung Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) and the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS) for evaluating self-reported anxiety and depression. We used the Symptom Checklist 90-R (SCL-90-R) for assessing self-reported global psychological symptoms. Seventeen patients (14%) had a DSM-IV-TR axis I psychiatric comorbidity. At enrollment the mean SAS score was above the normal range. The mean SDS and SCL-90-R scores were on the normal range except for SCL-90-R anxiety subscale. When treated, patients reported lower SAS, SDS and SCL-90-R scores, with statistically significant differences. Psychiatric distress and functional impairment were present in a significantly higher percentage of patients before starting the hormonal treatment than after 12 months (50% vs. 17% for anxiety; 42% vs. 23% for depression; 24% vs. 11% for psychological symptoms; 23% vs. 10% for functional impairment). The results revealed that the majority of transsexual patients have no psychiatric comorbidity, suggesting that transsexualism is not necessarily associated with severe comorbid psychiatric findings. The condition, however, seemed to be associated with subthreshold anxiety/depression, psychological symptoms and functional impairment. Moreover, treated patients reported less psychiatric distress. Therefore, hormonal treatment seemed to have a positive effect on transsexual patients’ mental health.

Fischer Explains How To Exorcise Your New Home To Rid It Of Demonic Spirits

on the subject of superstitious irrationality... some people who are terrified of shadows.

The cause of their terror.

"Jane Doe" and her G/Fs

Lessons of History Department

The Religious Reich has been like this for a while.

Different Planets

There's this one :

"Jane Doe" and her G/Fs

Then there's the one the Religious Right lives on:

Do you ever feel like you’ve just landed on a different planet? I do when I learn about situations like the following. Several girls at a school in Colorado are finding out just exactly what is involved in transgender rights. An older boy has been entering the girls’ restroom at Florence High School in Florence, Colorado, claiming he’s a female and then he’s apparently been harassing some of the actual, biological girls. But when the girls’ families contacted the school, did this legitimate complaint receive respectful attention from officials? Not exactly. The school is defending this aggressive boy and his rights and the privacy rights of the girls are being waved away as not that important.

This statement was made over a week after the issue was revealed as a hoax - that the "harassment" was just this girl going to school like other girls.

On their planet, the picture above is of an "aggressive older boy harassing some actual biological girls".

The Gender Similarities Hypothesis

The Gender Similarities Hypothesis Hyde, Janet Shibley American Psychologist, Vol 60(6), Sep 2005

The differences model, which argues that males and females are vastly different psychologically, dominates the popular media. Here, the author advances a very different view, the gender similarities hypothesis, which holds that males and females are similar on most, but not all, psychological variables. Results from a review of 46 meta-analyses support the gender similarities hypothesis. Gender differences can vary substantially in magnitude at different ages and depend on the context in which measurement occurs. Overinflated claims of gender differences carry substantial costs in areas such as the workplace and relationships.

It's a meta-meta analysis - a summary of summaries of experiments - and later work has shown rather more differences than the early metastudies would imply. About the only glaringly obvious ones visible here are those determined not by gender as such, but purely by testosterone levels.

Nonetheless, it supports two contentions that later work has shown to be well evidenced. First, that genuine innate (albeit statistical) differences exist. Second, that men and women are far more similar than different.

Historically, it's been the differences that have been overblown due to ideological belief, with no evidentiary basis. These days, it's the differences that have been minimised or even denied, again due to ideological belief, and against the evidence. Throughout, the statistical nature of the differences, that one can make no claims at all about individuals in any one area, have been completely ignored. Men and women differ from each other. Men differ from other men too, and women from other women. Both men and women as individuals can be more or less stereotypically masculine or feminine in different areas, gender is not a binary but a complex multivariant.

Open Minded Health

Open Minded Health - Results of Transsexual Brain Studies (as at 2011)

Recommended.

Conclusion
The amount of research that has been completed on the differences between transsexual and cissexual brains is small, but suggestive. Some areas of the brain appear to be sexually dimorphic irrespective of genetics or hormones (e.g., BSTc), whereas others appear to be more dependent upon sex hormones (e.g., brain volume). From the results of these studies, one may infer that pre-transition transsexual women’s brains are feminine in the BSTc and INAH3, partially feminine in their white matter tracts, and masculine in total brain and hypothalamic volume. Data in transsexual men is rarer because these studies are conducted in the western world, where transsexual women outnumber transsexual men (Gooren, 2006). However, studies of transsexual men appear to imply that the reverse is true for them.
These studies have numerous limitations. First, they have yet to be replicated. Replication is needed to ensure reliability and generalizability of these results. Second, these studies (especially those involving deceased brains) have small numbers of subjects, especially for the transsexual subjects. Studies involving brains from the Netherlands Brain Bank typically had fewer than 10 transsexual brains to study, and the latter two (Kruijver et al, Chung et al) only had a single transsexual male brain. Although fewer numbers of subjects are generally more acceptable in biological research than in psychological research, it is still a potential source of error.
Potentially the most glaring limitation in these studies is their conflation of sexual orientation and gender identity. Berglund et al (2008), for example, only compared heterosexual cissexual women and men with gynephilic/homosexual transsexual women. While they could not include androphilic/heterosexual transsexual women in their study because of rarity, they failed to include homosexual cissexual men and women as comparison groups. This introduces a potentially confounding variable.
Despite these limitations, evidence so far is suggestive of a biological influence in transsexuality. More research is needed to confirm and expand these preliminary findings.

Some of these criticisms have been met - at least partially - since 2011. Others remain. As a summary of the state-of-the-art back then, I could only improve on it marginally.

Two for the Reference Library

Good practice guidelines for the assessment and treatment of adults with gender dysphoria 2013-1-25 Royal College of Psychiatrists (PDF)

The following organisations have endorsed the report:

• British Association of Urological Surgeons 
• British Psychological Society
• Gender Identity Research and Education Society
• Gender Trust
• Press for Change
• Royal College of General Practitioners
• Royal College of Nursing
• Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
• Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health*
• Royal College of Physicians
• Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists
• Royal College of Surgeons
• UK Council for Psychotherapy

Factors that help to support successful outcomes are a consistent gender identity and psychological stability before and after surgery, adequate psychological preparation and transition at an early age (De Cuypere et al, 2006), including properly informed consent about benefits, risks and outcomes. A survey in the UK showed a high level of satisfaction (98%) following genital surgery (Schonfield, 2008). Two studies on outcomes in women and men showed that they function well on a physical, emotional, psychological and social level (Weyers et al, 2009; Wierckx et al, 2011). Overall, there are a number of studies that report extremely high transgender patient satisfaction with genital reconstructive surgery.

The next one... is bad. The report itself is very good, but looking at the events that caused it to be written... it's hard not to weep uncontrollably.

Involuntary or coerced sterilisation of intersex people in Australia - Parliamentary report and recommendations (PDF).

Mr Ansara explained that concern or trauma resulting from early medical
experiences can have broader consequences:

What you see is that a lot of intersex people do not seek medical care even
when emergency treatment is needed, because they are so afraid of further
medical abuse. For myself, I had some medical treatments done to me
nonconsensually that I, frankly, never talk about because it just is not safe,
and there are many people who will avoid medical treatment on that basis.

Reading the raw testimony is heartbreaking. OK, I had nonconsensual surgery at age 20 - "just taking out the gallbladder" - leaving me with a livid scar from bikini line to breastbone, one that's caused shocked looks from medics since then. I don't even know what was taken out, the pathology reports on the "anomalous tissue" were... mislaid. As was the standard practice of the time.
Meh. I would have consented if asked, based on what we knew then.

I did not suffer medical abuse by any reasonable definition of the term. Many, many others have. And do. This report might just put a stop to that, if the recommendations are implemented.

Bearing False Witness - The Spectral Evidence of Violation and Rape

Let's take a moment to discern the Spirits.... Now the public schoolchildren are being told by a demonic spirit "You must open up your daughters' privacy to our perversion". And this demonic spirit inside of this boy is now violating, and for all intents and purposes, he's raping - at least visually - these teenage girls.

"Spectral evidence" is the only evidence they have, of course. Only they can see the true danger.
Everyone else in the town sees a girl using a restroom and engaging in girltalk, as she's done for the past two years.. A girl who happens to be Trans.

Oh yes - send money. The PJI needs it to alert the rest of the nation to this imminent threat by demonic forces that only they can discern.

Bearing False Witness - Part 3

Audio recordings of testimony by parents of students at Florence High School, Colorado, is now available online. Some are very, very angry.






Please read the testimony of businesses, students, parents.... it's at http://www.transadvocate.com/family-of-colorado-trans-kid-targeted-by-harassment-hoax-speaks-up.htm

It's not only Moms in Colorado who are very, very angry. There's at least one in Canberra, Australia who is now best described as "incandescent" now we're sure of the facts.

I'll do everything I can to hasten that day. Today sounds good. And I'll be after far more of their anatomy than that.

Bearing False Witness - Continued

"Progressive" sites are starting to ask questions.

How Eager Is Conservative Media To Demonize Transgender Youth?
Anti-LGBT Group Admits It Invented Story About Transgender Student Harassing Classmates
Fox News airs false transphobic report

Fox News Reports Fake Story About Transgender Student Harassing Girls In High School Bathroom

False Reports of Trans Bathroom Harassment Circulate
Right-Wing Group: Presence of Trans Student in Girls' Restroom Is 'Harassment'

"Reactionary" sites are doubling down. I'm not saying they're encouraging  a lynching.. no, belay that, I am saying that. Too much evidence to say otherwise.

A comment at WND - longer than most, but otherwise typical to mild

Science (truth) is being removed from America to create dumb kids/slaves of sexual desires by sexualizing children through Marxist "Sex Ed"----through forcing Vice on our children--forcing them to think sodomizing other is "Good" and a "Right" when it is a vile, dysfunctional Vice. Totally insane and removes Reason and Natural Laws/Christian Ethics (foundation of our Constitutional Rights).
Homosexuality and sexual confusion is caused by Childhood Trauma---and they are trying to normalize child abuse and corrupt and warp Reason and Truth of ALL normal students. They are destroying (erasing) Christian Ethics replacing them with Satanic/pagan religions where sodomy is used in Rites of Worship of Ba'al. All muslim nations prefer boys for sex and segregate/hate women. The schools hate these normal "girls". We are trying to normalize muslim ethics because we have them running the White House and our military and now Boy Scouts---to normalize pagan/sodomy and force Pride in anal sex and perversions (hate for women).
Sexualizing children corrupts normal sexual identity formation which requires innocence in Latency. it is like sexual rape of a child---only Sex Ed is rape of their minds/worldview which destroys all normal perceptions of the body with evil concepts where the body is used in dysfunctional, Vile ways. Dehumanization.
They are forcing "Sex Ed" (developed by Cultural Marxists (Lukacs)) which normalizes perversions and sexual acts in children. It corrupts children like in the vulgar Weimar Republic.
The insane boy is being used to force "Vice is Good" on others to destroy "normal" and "moral in our children. He is a traumatized kid--probably sexually molested like most homosexuals and Chastity Bono--raped as a girl. Trying to make mental illness normal is psychosexual politics of the Leftist to destroy autonomy and civil society---to collapse culture. Igniting sexual passions in children is what Sex Ed is designed to do before they have the ability to use Reason to control base instincts---which takes maturity.
Sex Ed is to flip "Good and Evil"--make muslim ethics of sodomy normal---like all our media/books/schools are designed to do---reduce man to rutting animals so that Billy Ayers/Al Gores and zero Marxists can make the masses into slaves and kill off all the useless eaters through their death panels in obamacare as they party and have their orgies like Sugar Keynes had at Harvard.

More succinct comments, including the usual threats of violence. Mostly it's just talk, Mostly. :

Some news outlets are reporting it straight,, even if they don't always get the details right. Most aren't touching the story.

Another southern Colo. transgender student denied access to girls’ restroom

More than 950 students go to Florence High School. Like any high school, there’s no shortage of gossip.
“The whole school is talking about it,” said Florence High School senior Kayli Conway.
It being a male student who claims he’s transgender and wants to use the girls’ restroom.
“They’re kind of making it a bigger deal than it should be,” said Conway.
Conway says the gossip began at the start of the school year.
“I know that they’re trying to tell her that she can’t use the females restroom and I think that’s kind of wrong because she’s trying to be a girl,” she said
...
This isn’t the first time a southern Colorado school has been at odds with a transgender student’s request to use a girl’s restroom. In a case that gained national attention, Eagleside Elementary School in Fountain refused to let 6-year-old Coy Mathis use the girl’s restroom.
Mathis’ parents took the issue to the Colorado Civil Rights Division, which ruled that any effort by Eagleside staff to bar Mathis’ access to restrooms had to be classified as discrimination.

Actually, she hasn't been denied access. That's the point, and the PJI doesn't like that. Hence the PJI made stuff up - though they've since retracted. Sorta.

“First of all, it’s our position that a teenage boy’s presence into the bathroom for teenage girls is inherently harassing,” said Matthew McReynolds, staff attorney at the Pacific Justice Institute, who is representing the families of the girls involved. “It’s inherently violative of their privacy rights. It’s also intimidating when you have a boy like this, who is not a freshman, going in there with younger freshman girls. They feel violated. They feel intimidated, and that’s been expressed to us.”
The girls further allege the boy has made sexually harassing comments in that setting.
“Details continue to emerge on this in terms of what what kind of comments may have been made. We’ve heard some reports that he’s commented on what girls are wearing or their figure while in the bathroom. If you can imagine that scenario from the reference and framework of a teenage girl, I think that’s pretty harassing,” said McReynolds, who reiterated that a boy simply being in the girls’ restroom is ample harassment in itself

So now they're alleging that a Trans girl used the girls' restroom. I think that's probably true.
And while there, behaved like any other girl. Maybe even remarked on hairstyle, asked for tips on makeup, complimented others on accessorising. As has been known to happen even with "girls" in their 50's.

I'll repeat this guy's words again:

"This is exactly the kind of horror story we have been warning would accompany the push for radical transgender rights in schools, and it is the type of situation that LGBT activits (sic) have been insisting would not happen.”

Um.

OK, an eccentric (to put it mildly) political group doing a "beat up", just like they did when they said that teaching that the Earth orbits the Sun was "creating a hostile environment for those of faith".

But then it gets nasty.

From Transadvocate (a site I sometimes contribute to - I'm not an "objective third party" here)

Both PJI and Brennan seem content to pretend that this is about something other than the life of a transgender child. ADULTS have made reprehensible claims about this kid – directly inciting violent intent – without evidence to back it up. After their smear campaign lead to public calls to hunt, beat and kill the trans youth, Brennan released the kid’s name.
Brennan became somewhat infamous after she outed a trans teen to his parents and school, attempted to intervene in the medical care of a transgender person she didn’t like and attempted to have the United Nations strip protections from the global trans community.

Radical Feminist Lesbian Lawyer Cathy Brennan is now acting as a member of the "Pacific Justice Institute's Ladies' Auxiliary", hosting fund-raising letters for them, and now even conveying this Trans girl's personal details to those who want to kill her.

And of course making personal attacks - including giving false information to their employers - on those she opposes. Like Cristan. Like me. Like pretty much every person, Trans, Intersex, Ally of fellow Feminist she finds herself in disagreement with. This goes well beyond Internet trolling, well beyond even the dirtiest politics. It goes into dangerous sociopathy and physical violence.

This time, and not for the first time, her victim-du-jour is a teenage girl.